Specialty Coffee News and Events from Around the World

March 2010

March 26, 2010

I am back in the United States. I have lots of great video that needs to be processed from my recent trip to Ethiopia. I will post that when I can.

In the meantime, I am in New York City for the next couple of weeks. This Sunday I will be making coffee with my good friends at OST Café in the East Village. Stop on by from 10 to 6, Sunday March 28, and say hello!

March 10, 2010

Those 40 new specialty coffee shops in NYC that you read about in the New York Times? They have to get their coffee from somewhere... this post is about the hidden side of the specialty coffee boom.

I'm writing on the road here, at the Atlanta airport. In another 20 hours or so I will be touching down once again in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

This trip is all about the Cupping Caravan in Harar. A group of 14 coffee buyers from around the world are coming together to cup coffee out at the farms and mills.

We have mobile cupping units, complete with cups, spoons, mini grinders, electric roasters, a gas stove and kettles for water. We're driving out to the mills in the remote areas of Harar via 4x4 vehicle. We have electric inverters to hook the equipment to the car batteries for roasting the samples. We're cupping all these coffees on site at the coops!

Most Ethiopian coffee farmers have never tasted their own product prepared the way the consumer prepares it. In fact, most of them are not even aware that there is such a thing as a roasting company (since roasting is done daily by the small batch on little metal pans).

We're taking all the information and process that takes months to exchange and collapsing it to a single day. I don't think I've ever been as excited for a coffee project as I am for this one. Deals will be going down, as well. The buyers are getting a chance to buy directly from the coops.

These are the changes that have to continue to happen at the production end of things if we are going to keep having such wild success on the consumption end of things that we see detailed in today's New York Times.

Please check out our facebook page and leave a comment there. As usual when on the road, my posts will come when I have the opportunity to use the internet.

March 09, 2010

Hello from Marin County, California. Yesterday we roasted over 40 samples of fresh crop El Salvador coffees and weighed out cups. This morning we got up extra early to do a preliminary selection cupping of the 40+ samples. We picked out 16 exemplary lots, bourbons and pacamaras, washed and honey process. Some friends at Bay Area super specialty roasters came over and cupped them more fully with us.

These are very young, very fresh coffees. All micro-lots, specially selected in El Salvador by Graciano Cruz. 30 bags maximum exist of each of these coffees. They are super high-grade coffees that in the past were getting mixed together and lost at the exporter level. We're doing some really exciting work to keep them separated out and offered to roasters like these folks who will give them the TLC they deserve. There are a ton more honey process coffees on the way too, but they are still being processed at this point.

Thanks to everyone who came by.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Ethiopia for the Cupping Caravan in Harar. More on that to come!

March 08, 2010

Coffee lovers in places such as Seattle increasingly benefit from residing in a mecca for premium, specialty coffees, but few realize that distinguished beans are being roasted in lesser-known locales such as Topeka, Kan., Leeds, Ala., and Spicewood, Texas.

March 01, 2010

This is the project I have been working on for the last couple of months. I helped organize two of these "Cupping Caravans." The first one was just completed! In Yirgacheffe and Sidama. I'm really proud and pleased to see that it went off well.

The second one is in two weeks, in Harar. I will be there to lead that group. I'm really excited.